Roo jumps back to Tamworth

AFTER a whirlwind 2012, Roo Arcus will play his first show at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in more than half a decade tonight when he performs at the Wes Diggers Showroom.

The Parkesbourne cattle farmer is also nominated for four Channel C Country Blue Shoe Awards, including Best Male Artist of the Year, Best Album, Best Video and Best Song.

During a recent interview with the Post, Arcus said his comeback was going as well as he possibly could have hoped.

His album, ‘This Here Cowboy’, was released to critical acclaim and the title track spent 19 weeks in the CMR Charts, ten weeks in the Top 10 with three at number one. He is also receiving steady airplay in the US, South America and Europe.

In the late 1990s Arcus was dubbed by industry heavyweights as the next big thing.

He was nominated for two Golden Guitars following the release of his first album and toured with some of the nation’s best, including James Blundell, Lee Kernaghan and the legendary Slim Dusty. He even wrote a track for Dusty.

But in 2004 he was forced to put his career on hold after his mother was diagnosed with leukaemia and his father was unable to continue running the family property.

He had children not long after and was forced to endure crippling drought.

His career was on hiatus for eight years until he finally felt it was time to get back in the saddle.

With one shot at success, he put everything on the line financially to produce an album, a throwback to the golden age of country.

“The lines were becoming really blurred between what was country and what was pop,” he explained.

“Sometimes I’d turn on the radio and I wasn’t sure what station I was on. The cross over stuff was great for country because it grew the audience but there was another whole audience that was still there that had just been forgotten about.

“It seemed like the industry had been so busy trying to create a new audience that they had forgotten about the old one… “What I was really hoping for was people appreciating hearing real country music again and fans have really got behind that here and pushed that cause.”

Arcus is currently preparing to hit the road with America’s Doug Bruce for their national Cowboys and Honkytonks Tour, which kicks off at the Hallam Hotel on February 21.

For more information, including tour dates and downloads visit http://www.rooarcus.com or track him down on Facebook.